Is It Over For Giulia In WWE?

WWE

In late 2023, reports began emerging about WWE’s interest in then STARDOM star Giulia, who was coming off an impressive run as the World of Stardom Champion.

In April 2024, WWE’s interest in Giulia would take a step up, when she was in attendance at WWE WrestleMania XL and Stand & Deliver the night before, even taking photos with WWE Chief Content Officer Paul Levesque.

It seemed then that, after years of pursuing her, the Beautiful Madness was set to hit WWE like a rocket and become one of the company’s top women’s stars.

Now over a year into her run on the main roster, and Giulia has never felt less important than she does right now, with seemingly no end in sight for her recent downturn in booking.

It’s time to ask the question; are any chances of Giulia making it big in WWE now over?

Rise To STARDOM

After finding her footing in the wrestling industry in Ice Ribbon, Giulia’s star began to rise in 2019, when she announced she had signed with World Wonder Ring STARDOM.

Giulia would form her Donna Del Mondo stable just months after signing with the company, initially with just herself, Maika and Syuri, though the group would later recruit more members, including former AEW Women’s World Champion Thekla, who Giulia would form a deadly tag team with as Mafia Bella.

After her stock rose in the company over the next few years, mainly as a result of a bitter rivalry with Tam Nakano, which ended with Giulia shaving her head after losing a hair vs hair match, she would reach the mountain top in 2022, when she won the company’s 5 Star Grand Prix Tournament, before going on to unseat former stablemate Syuri for the World of Stardom Championship at Dream Queendom 2 in December 2022.

After losing the title to Tam Nakano at All Star Grand Queendom in April 2023, Giulia remained a key feature in the promotion up until her departure the following year.

WWE’s Partnership With Marigold

When former STARDOM owner Rossy Ogawa left the company in 2024, he would go on to form the Dream Star Fighting Marigold promotion, with Giulia being unveiled as one of the company’s two marquee names alongside fellow former World of Stardom Champion Utami Hayashishita.

It would later be announced that Marigold would strike a working agreement partnership with WWE, which included IYO SKY heading to the promotion to face Utami Hayashishita in 2024, and then again for a match with legendary rival Mayu Iwatani in 2025.

The early WWE partnership with Marigold was almost done in part due to the company’s interest in Giulia, with her only competing in the company for the first four months of it’s existence before signing with WWE.

It truly seemed as though Giulia had the world at her feet around this time, as her arrival in NXT was highly anticipated by everyone.

Giulia’s Arrival In NXT

Giulia’s arrival in NXT would come at the No Mercy event on September 1, 2024, when she would confront Roxanne Perez after her NXT Women’s Championship defence against Jaida Parker.

This led to the first episode of NXT on the CW Network, when Giulia challenged Roxanne for the title, but ultimately lost after interference from Cora Jade.

Cora and Roxanne’s rivalry with Giulia led to the arrival of another major free agent women’s signing to NXT, Stephanie Vaquer, who would team with Giulia to defeat the pair at Halloween Havoc.

Giulia would then go on to win the Iron Survivor Challenge in December, before capturing the NXT Women’s title from Roxanne on the New Year’s Evil episode of NXT on January 7, 2025.

Giulia’s brief time in NXT came to an end after Roadblock that year, when she lost her title to Stephanie Vaquer in a winner take all match also for Vaquer’s Women’s North American Championship.

Giulia was signed to WWE on a major contract, which made clear that she wasn’t going to be spending long on the NXT brand, and with WWE in a rush to get her up to the main roster, things were almost surely going to be better for her up there.

Early Main Roster Success

On the Raw after WrestleMania 41, Giulia would make her debut on the main roster, when her and Roxanne Perez would attack Women’s World Champion IYO SKY and NXT Women’s Champion Stephanie Vaquer on the show.

Giulia and Roxanne’s partnership was a promising one, with the pair immediately targeting top names, and main eventing episodes of Raw against IYO SKY and Rhea Ripley just weeks into their run.

When WWE was finished with the partnership, Giulia was officially called up to the main roster in May, when Nick Aldis signed her to the SmackDown brand, with her qualifying for the Women’s Money In The Bank match that year.

While she didn’t capture the briefcase, Giulia would find quick success on SmackDown just as she did in NXT, when she defeated Zelina Vega to win the Women’s United States Championship.

With Kiana James by her side, WWE had created a badass champion if the booking continued to support her the way it did out the gate in both NXT and on the main roster.

Unfortunately though, it didn’t…

The Start Of Giulia’s Bad Run Of Booking

It’s hard to pinpoint where exactly things started going wrong for Giulia on the main roster, but the first sign of it came at Evolution last year, where not only was Giulia the only champion not to defend their title on the show, she was featured in a Battle Royal and ended up being eliminated halfway through the match.

WWE’s booking of the Women’s United States Championship continued to be questionable when the title would go over a year of it’s entire existence without being defended on a premium live event, with Jade Cargill and Tiffany Stratton’s clash at Night of Champions this year the first time ever the title was defended on a PLE.

Then, after weeks and weeks of only appearing in brief backstage segments, giving her no real time to establish herself as champion or a connection with fans, Giulia would lose the title unceremoniously to Chelsea Green on the November 7 episode of SmackDown, with Giulia losing the match in just two minutes in a move that felt like it was going back to an already established well, as Chelsea was already coming off a (very entertaining) run as champion herself.

Giulia would win the title back on January 2 of this year, though the damage had already been done to both her character and the championship due to clear creative indifference, so it was hard to be optimistic.

WWE would dangle one carrot in front of fans when they teased a match between Giulia and IYO SKY, even announcing that the two would face off on an episode of SmackDown back in February, before the advertising was changed for no explainable reason.

Fans thought that WWE would end up running Giulia vs. IYO SKY at WrestleMania at the time, but they ended up not booking either woman to wrestle on the biggest show of the year, with Giulia losing the title to Tiffany Stratton the following Friday.

A Second Glimmer Of Hope

Despite a bad start of the year creatively, WWE was handed a lifeline with Giulia and an easy way to salvage her booking on the main roster by way of a babyface turn on Kiana James.

Giulia competed in the first round of the Queen of the Ring Tournament in her home country of Italy, where she lost the match to IYO SKY also featuring Lash Legend and Roxanne Perez, taking the fall in front of her home country fans.

Giulia would turn babyface against Kiana James to a great reception on the June 5 episode of SmackDown in Bologna, Italy, which felt like Giulia had finally gathered momentum on the main roster for the first time.

WWE would respond to this by keeping Giulia in backstage segments for the next few weeks and blowing off her rivalry with Kiana James on an episode of Main Event.

The Abyss

After weeks of being one of many current women on the SmackDown roster struggling for TV time, Giulia had a chance to reappear on the show as part of the qualifying matches for the Interim WWE Women’s Championship Ladder match at SummerSlam.

With Rhea Ripley out injured, WWE had a chance to spotlight some of it’s newer faces on the roster such as Giulia and Lash Legend, which led to confusion when the two were booked against each other in a qualifier, as one would surely miss out.

Lash scoring the win over Giulia wasn’t unwelcomed, as Lash is another name that is almost certainly set for a big future in WWE, but the manner of how it happened left a bad taste in the mouth of fans, as she would put Giulia down in under two minutes to qualify.

The match was part of a much bigger conversation about WWE’s women’s booking that I will no doubt get into at a later date, but the decision to continually cut time from women’s matches led to both women being treated like an afterthought.

WWE Hall of Famer AJ Styles would say that fans should ‘be patient’ about Giulia’s booking following the loss, but as Giulia is now being booked to lose matches on Main Event and be used as fodder for other debuting stars, it’s easy to understand that fans’ patience could be waning thin…

Is It Too Late For Giulia In WWE?

Short answer: no, but it’s going to take actual care and effort from the WWE creative team that has seemingly not been there for much of 2026, especially in the women’s division.

Long answer: Giulia on WWE SmackDown is a dead act. Debuting as a promising breakout star, her flame is well and truly extinguished on the blue brand, and as the roster continues to add more and more names, her chances are going to grow thinner and thinner.

Meanwhile, the Raw roster has a total of eight active in-ring competitors following the returns of Becky Lynch and Stephanie Vaquer, with the Judgment Day and whoever they are feuding with making up basically the entire division on Monday nights.

Giulia, along with about 4 other women, would greatly benefit from a move over to Raw from SmackDown, where she could get to revisit history with Stephanie Vaquer both as a partner and a rival, as well as exciting match ups with IYO SKY, Becky Lynch, Lyra Valkyria and a rematch with Roxanne Perez waiting for her.

However, the problem with her on SmackDown isn’t that there are no options, it’s that the booking has clearly de-emphasised her. There are a lot of exciting matches for her on SmackDown, her and Blake Monroe in Blake’s debut should be killer if the company allows it to be.

Even if not Raw, a potential return to NXT or move to AAA would also be fresh scenery for Giulia, where she can be allowed to showcase her skills once again, and remind the fans, and most importantly the company itself, why WWE was so interested in signing her for many years.

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